CAMPAIGN 2004 / Californians hit the swing-state trail / Others set up banks of phones to make long-distance pitch

Published 4:00 am, Saturday, October 30, 2004

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Kerry-Edwards campaign volunteer, Susana Millman of San Francisco, makes cell phone calls to voters in Nevada to help support Kerry-Edwards from an apartment in the Tenderloin.
10/27/04 in San Francisco
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Kerry-Edwards campaign volunteer, Susana Millman of San Francisco, makes cell phone calls to voters in Nevada to help support Kerry-Edwards from an apartment in the Tenderloin. ... more

Photo: Darryl Bush

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Kerry-Edwards campaign volunteer, Susan Merrell of San Francisco, works from a phone list and a script as volunteers make cell phone calls to help support Kerry-Edwards from an apartment in the Tenderloin.
10/27/04 in San Francisco
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Kerry-Edwards campaign volunteer, Susan Merrell of San Francisco, works from a phone list and a script as volunteers make cell phone calls to help support Kerry-Edwards from an ... more

Photo: Darryl Bush

CAMPAIGN 2004 / Californians hit the swing-state trail / Others set up banks of phones to make long-distance pitch

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With Democratic nominee John Kerry comfortably ahead in their home state, thousands of Californians are spending the presidential campaign's final days trying to sway voters in the crucial "swing" states that will decide Tuesday's election.

Whether people are spending several hundred dollars for the privilege of walking door-to-door in rural Ohio this weekend, street canvassing to fund out- of-state operations, or hosting a phone bank in their home to goose potential voters in Florida, the eleventh-hour effort represents the final blast of the intense political passions that have roared in California since the turmoil following the 2000 election.

With little time until election day, that energy is coupled with the desire to avoid an electoral hangover.

"You don't want to wake up Wednesday morning to what we've had for the last four years," said Bradley Mart, a 47-year-old Oakland resident who will travel to New Mexico this weekend with his family.

While his wife, Madeleine Zayas-Mart, will be knocking on doors for Kerry, Mart will care for their 14-month-old daughter at a hotel. "We've had it up to here with this administration and wanted to do whatever we could to help," he said.

What Mart has found inspiring is "finding out informally over the past few days that about six people we know told us that they're going to swing states, too. There's really something happening here."

The last-minute exportation is predominantly in support of Kerry, as California Republicans prefer to focus their volunteer power locally. A Field Poll released Friday showed Kerry with 49 percent of the vote in a survey of likely California voters, compared with 42 percent for Republican President Bush.

"We're really encouraging people to stay in-state and work on the races here," said California GOP spokeswoman Karen Hanretty.

Laguna Niguel resident Julie Vandermost will spend the weekend shuttling from Orange County, where Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is scheduled to make an appearance today at a GOP rally, to help in a tight Assembly race in San Diego.

"I've been seeing people at the supermarket saying, 'President Bush has got to win this,' and I say, 'Get to a phone bank,' " Vandermost said.

Many Democrats are taking that a step further. The desire to travel to the electoral action is so intense that Assemblyman Joe Nation, D-San Rafael, will be campaigning door-to-door for Kerry in Ohio this weekend instead of for himself at home, where he faces re-election.

"I just felt that I could do more for my home district here (in Ohio)," said Nation, who spent Thursday recruiting 60 volunteers after a Michael Moore speech at Youngstown State University. "The choice I had was to watch this from afar, to stand on the sidelines, or to go to where I was needed most."

That similar desire is motivating at least 2,000 Kerry volunteers -- about half each from Northern and Southern California -- to head everywhere from Nevada to Ohio to do the door-knocking grunt work of last-minute campaigning.

And that's just according to estimates from the Kerry campaign. Left- leaning independent groups such as MoveOn PAC and America Coming Together each are trying to put 25,000 volunteers nationally in swing states, with road- tripping Californians supplying many of their recruits. DrivingVotes.org is planning five road trips from the Bay Area to Reno and Las Vegas this weekend.

One is being made by San Carlos resident Matthew Stewart, who left Thursday for Tampa with his boyfriend, ready to do whatever tasks the MoveOn operatives ask. They will spend $1,000 on their flights and rental car -- typical for a final weekend swing stater -- but expect to have free housing there with a local Kerry supporter.

"We decided to go to Florida because that's where the greatest need seems to be," Stewart said. "And we plan on sticking around through the end of next week, in case there are protests, or any funny business happening with the voting."

About 350 Kerry supporters from the Bay Area are headed to Reno, as Bush's lead in Nevada is within most polls' margin of error. Busloads carrying 1,000 Southern Californians are heading to Nevada, and to a lesser extent New Mexico, Oregon and Arizona, said Nathan Ballard, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee in California.

"This kind of thing (traveling to swing states) is unprecedented at this level," Ballard said.

At least 200 Bay Area residents will be Ohio this weekend, said Matt Gabriele, a UC Berkeley graduate student who has coordinated travel for the East Bay Kerry group of supporters.

"There's so much more a voter can do there (in a swing state) with face- to-face contact than they can over the phone," Gabriele said. "And there's this incredible energy in the Bay Area to do that."

Stephanie Redish is one of few Republicans road-tripping to a swing state. She's heading to Oregon with three friends Saturday "to get involved. I wanted to be somewhere where I can make a difference," said the San Francisco consumer product marketer.

For those who can't afford to travel, the Kerry campaign estimates that there will be 200 phone banks in the Bay Area, where callers will be dialing more than 1 million swing state voters in the last week of the campaign, said Ballard.

Scott Fenton has been host for a phone bank in his 2,200-square-foot Tenderloin apartment for the past two weeks, and will continue doing so until Tuesday. With 15 to 20 people showing up every night, he estimates that 1,000 calls are made per night to swing states. Until the Democratic committee supplied a handful of phones this week, Fenton supplied the phones or asked volunteers to donate minutes.

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"I can't bear the thought of Bush being re-elected," said Fenton, even though he said that he is wealthy enough to have prospered from receiving "Bush's tax cuts that I didn't need."

And his neighbors, like Jan Michaels, a 44-year-old San Francisco security guard, were glad they had a place to get involved in the race. As she prepared to call Las Vegas voters this week from Fenton's apartment, Michaels said: "I knew if I didn't do everything I could to help, and Kerry didn't win, that I'd feel really bad."

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